Okay what happened yesterday?

It was supposed to be a rest day, to lounge around and relax after a hard speed session on Tuesday. You know a scheduled day off and I was actually looking forward to not running yesterday – I needed the day off.

Well the good thing was that I did not run.

However, we did get a storm that left 7-10 inches of snow to move around. Which I did in the morning, about 3 hours of playing behind the snowblower. I thought that it was done, but when we sat down for lunch the rains came for about an hour and then it snowed again, just enough that I had to go out and play behind the snowblower again for another 2.5 hours.

While I didn’t run, I did set a new daily record for steps with 42,699. The sad part of all of this is that I didn’t go more than 400 yards from the end of my driveway all day. So I got plenty of time on my feet and LOTS of weight lifting done yesterday.

This was the cause of most of the weight lifting, although a shovel did get used a little too much as well.

Which meant that this morning, during Bennie’s first walk, I got to figure out how bad I was going to feel all day and if my tempo session was going to get moved by a day. Actually, during the walk I didn’t feel as bad as I thought that I was going to, but due to the road conditions I got asked to drive in to Augusta first thing.

Which meant an early stop at the gym for my Tempo workout. No biggie, but it did kind of throw me out of sorts since I am used to a leisurely breakfast, doing Bennie’s longer walk and than figuring out where I would do my scheduled run.

This morning with the road conditions there was no question about the where – treadmill at Planet Fitness. It was just a question of what kind of workout I would end up doing.

Tempo or Easy 5.0

After an easy 1.0 mile warm-up and I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to see how the tempo pace felt. I started at half-marathon race pace and after the first mile I knew that I was going to go for completing the workout and kept going.

At 2.5 miles of the tempo portion, I HAD to stop and scurry to the locker room for a quick pit stop – no choice in the matter. Since I had stopped the tempo run at that point, when I got back, I had decided as a penalty for stopping that I would do an extra half mile and run the last 2.0 miles at a .1 mph faster pace.

I didn’t feel bad until the last quarter mile, but powered through to the finish for a total of 4.5 miles at race pace. Then I went ahead and relaxed for a half mile at my recovery pace – it was just enough time to get the body feeling good again, take a couple sips of water and get ready for the next part of my tempo workout (my addition to the Hanson plan – Strides)

5 x .1 @ at a fast pace with .1 recoveries

2 x .1 @ at a .5 faster pace with .1 recoveries

1 x .1 @ at a .5 a very fast for me pace to finish up

Then add on a half mile at my easy pace for a total of 8.0 miles.

Yes, I was toast when I finished, but at the same time nothing broke, I pushed the old body pretty hard and still had something left in the tank.

Tomorrow’s run will be an easy recovery run of that I have no doubt.

Overall, a very good workout, that would have been better without the pit stop – it just means that I have to look at how I am eating closer again.

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how well I did run today and no, I don’t believe that I am doing too much, since I have not gotten the doldrums or any substantial aches or pains. I am still eating better than I used to and purposely resting more, along with my easy runs actually being run slow has/is making a huge difference.